If you are a company that sells to other industrial companies, and you are looking for how to improve and / or increase your sales, you should consider the industrial purchasing process.
Surely you know the industrial buying process as something very similar to this:
But as a provider, this involves many challenges:
- How will you stand out from all the suppliers, for something that is not a price competition?
- How will you manage to transmit the quality and experience of your company in a way that really makes sense and does not end in SPAM or in the trash can?
- How to make the decision maker consider you as their supplier?
That is why here we will give you a slightly different approach to what you know today as the industrial purchasing process, but that will help you complement it and design more objective and effective strategies for this type of challenge.
First, it is extremely important that you define your market (what kind of company, what kind of positions you should talk to … your ideal client). Since you have defined your ideal client, now you must create a strategy based on your buyer journey, which is nothing more than the process of searching for a consumer until he becomes a customer.
It is very common for companies to forget completely about the industrial purchasing process, and focus on selling directly to people, but we do not always find people who already have all the conditions to buy; What do I mean? we always arrive with our sales pitch of why they should buy us, but we do not stop to analyze if they are prepared to buy us, or if it is the right time or if it is better in the future.
In order to close a sale, we must find a person who:
- Knows he has a problem to solve or a goal to achieve,
- Already know what it really needs to accomplish this,
- and that has the money and the urgency to buy.
Your goal as a company should be to provide relevant information to your prospects in each of the stages preceding their final purchase decision. Based on this, you should define the industrial purchasing process!
The purchase stages are the following:
1. Exploration:
Our person has a problem and looks for answers to understand it better. In this stage you can create a Content Marketing strategy where you provide relevant information through a blog, Ebooks, videos or files that serve as templates.
2. Evaluation:
Our ideal client already knows exactly what their problem or opportunity is, and looks for how to solve it. Here, as you are already looking for services / products as such, you can show them what you do: like a free demo, a video or a success story.
3. Decision:
You already know what you want and will decide between 2 or 3 options. Now you can be more aggressive, like with a free advice, a live demonstration or a discount coupon.
So now you know, if you want to improve the results of your sales process, you should consider the industrial purchasing process from the point of view of your client (and with «your client», I mean the different people to whom you must talk to them, help them achieve their goals and convince them that you know what you are talking about and that you are there to help them). Go to your prospects as people, not as companies, because in the end the companies are their people and each one of you must speak to them differently (according to their department, goals and concerns),
If you want to know more, I invite you to download the free guide «How to improve B2B sales results in industrial companies», just click on the box below: